Officer Strangelove, Or How To Stop Worrying, Get Shit Done

Hey ya’ll! We’re taking a brief break from organizing, plannin’ awesome stuff, and doing a rad speaking tour, to let ya’ll know where we’re at and address the “infiltration” of our action camp. The term “Infiltration” sort of connotes that the fuzz [read: police, po-po, 5-0, etc] got access to a slew of confidential information by slowly gaining the trust of the group, which is simply not the case. To be completely honest, those sketchy macho dude-bros managed to do very little and only got the same information the rest of the hundred+ people got. It’s just how publicly announced action camps go. Anyone with a cell-phone could have called in the location of the action the morning of—but ya get the point. We got ‘em scared, so if ya want to take action, sign up on our sheet or shoot us an email at gptsresistance@riseup.net . If you can’t risk arrest or take some time to organize in your area, please consider donating.
-J.

Officer Strangelove, or: How We Learned To Stop Worrying and Get Shit Done.

We’re not surprised, and neither are we scared. The police were obvious in their machismo and the quality of their observations was laughable at best. In terms of inter-agency communications, we know that the history of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-extraction resistance movements is permeated with government repression. We acknowledge surveillance as a far-cry from the type of repression that other groups and individuals experience, and stand in solidarity with those who have been incarcerated on fabricated charges (Leonard Peltier, just one of many) or have been physically attacked by the United States government with military force (the MOVE bombing, and countless other incidents).

Together we will build a movement that can weather any storm, but it starts right now with acknowledging that the roots of our struggle go back before “climate justice” was ever a term.

All that being said, we do feel the need to acknowledge that the surveillance and inter-agency communication regarding Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance and other groups is an indication of our effectiveness. Possibly it’s the threat of an analysis that views infrastructure as a strategic weak-point in attacking the dominant ecocidal system. Possibly it’s the threat the direct action poses to the exploitative extraction industry that relies on our complacency to tear the earth to shreds. And possibly, it’s the fact that what is happening on this continent—First People’s banding together and shutting shit down, the largest environmental demonstrations ever seen on this continent, the re-emergence of direct action as a legitimate tool in the eco-wars—constitutes a huge threat to the status quo and exploitative industry.

The FBI’s commencement of multiple surveillance operations during the Green Scare indicated a larger program of using COINTELPRO-like tactics to create an atmosphere of fear, distrust, and paranoia to divide our social movements. The Green Scare specifically targeted those engaged in direct action in order to prevent the proliferation of those tactics, and ensure that folks resign themselves to the “safer” modes of organizing which uphold and validate the same systems that are actively destroying wild spaces, the health of countless communities, and the planet as a whole.

With the possibility of heavy-handed government repression, it is even more crucial to support those engaged in direct action and those facing State repression.